The Routledge Guidebook to Augustine’s Confessions

192 Pages·2016·1.54 MB·English

by  Catherine Conybeare

The Routledge Guides to the Great Books
’
The Routledge Guidebook to Augustine s
Confessions
Augustine’s Confessions is one of the most significant works of Western
culture.Castasalong,impassionedconversationwithGod,itisintertwined
with passages of life-narrative and with key theological and philosophical
insights.Itisenduringlypopular,andjustlyso.
TheRoutledge Guidebook toAugustine’sConfessions is an engagingintro-
duction to this spiritually creative and intellectually original work. This
guidebookis organizedbythemes:
(cid:1)
theimportanceoflanguage
(cid:1)
creationandthesensible world
(cid:1)
memory,time andthe self
(cid:1)
theafterlifeoftheConfessions.
Written for readers approaching the Confessions for the first time, this
guidebook addresses the literary, philosophical, historical and theological
complexities of the work in a clear and accessible way. Excerpts in both
Latin and English from this seminal work are included throughout the
book to provide a close examination of both the autobiographical and
theoreticalcontentwithintheConfessions.
Catherine Conybeare is Professor and Chair in the Department of Greek,
Latin, andClassicalStudies atBrynMawrCollege, USA.
THE ROUTLEDGE GUIDES TO THE GREAT
BOOKS
Series Editor: Anthony Gottlieb
The Routledge Guides to the Great Books provide ideal introductions to the texts
whichhaveshapedWesternCivilization.TheGuidebooksexploretheargumentsand
ideascontainedinthemostinfluentialworksfromsomeofthemostbrilliantthin-
kerswhohaveeverlived,fromAristotletoMarxandNewtontoWollstonecraft.Each
Guidebookopenswithashortintroductiontotheauthorofthegreatbookandthe
contextwithin whichtheywere workingand concludeswithan examinationofthe
lasting significance of the book. The Routledge Guides to the Great Books will
therefore provide students everywhere with complete introductions to the most
significantbooksofalltime.
Available:
Einstein’sRelativityJamesTrefil
Gramsci’sPrisonNotebooksJohnSchwarzmantel
Thoreau’sCivilDisobedienceBobPeppermanTaylor
Descartes’MeditationsGaryHatfield
Hobbes’LeviathanGlenNewey
Galileo’sDialogueMauriceA.Finocchiaro
Wittgenstein’sPhilosophicalInvestigationsMarieMcGinn
Aristotle’sNicomacheanEthicsGerardJ.Hughes
Heidegger’sBeingandTimeStephenMulhall
Hegel’sPhenomenologyofSpiritRobertStern
Locke’sEssayConcerningHumanUnderstandingE.J.Lowe
Plato’sRepublicNickolasPappas
Wollstonecraft’sAVindicationoftheRightsofWomanSandrineBergès
Mill’sOnLibertyJonathanRiley
Aquinas’SummaTheologiaeJasonEberl
Machiavelli’sThePrinceJohnScott
Kierkegaard’sFearandTremblingJohnA.Lippett
The Routledge Guides to the Great Books
The Routledge Guidebook to
’
Augustine s Confessions
Catherine Conybeare
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Firstpublished2016
byRoutledge
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Names:Conybeare,Catherine,author.
Title:TheRoutledgeguidebooktoAugustine’sConfessions/CatherineConybeare.
Description:1[edition].|NewYork,NY:Routledge,2016.|Series:TheRoutledge
guidestothegreatbooks|Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2015045353|ISBN9781138847972(hardback:alk.paper)|
ISBN9781138847989(pbk.:alk.paper)|ISBN9781315726250(e-book)
Subjects:LCSH:Augustine,Saint,BishopofHippo.Confessiones.
Classification:LCCBR65.A62C592016|DDC270.2092--dc23
LCrecordavailableathttp://lccn.loc.gov/2015045353
ISBN:978-1-138-84797-2(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-84798-9(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-72625-0(ebk)
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C
ONTENTS
Series editor’s preface vii
Acknowledgements viii
Map of key places in the Confessions x
Timeline xi
Preface xiv
1 Introduction 1
1 The title Confessions 1
2 The circumstances of composition of the Confessions 4
3 The meaning of conversio 9
4 The content of the Confessions 12
5 The structure of the Confessions 22
Excerpt 1: part of the opening prayer of the
Confessions (1.2.2) 27
2 Language 32
1 The Confessions as a conversation with God 32
2 The importance of questioning 36
3 Coming into language 40
vi
CONTENTS
4 Rhetoric and the Latin classics 43
5 Withdrawal from rhetoric 46
6 The language of the bible 51
7 The biblical language of the Confessions 57
Excerpt 2: the firmament as bible (13.15.16;18) 62
3 Creation and the sensible world 67
1 Language and sound 67
2 Sense perception and the perversion of the senses 71
3 Manicheism and materiality 76
4 Platonism and immateriality 82
5 The problem of Christ 88
6 Creation as an intimation of God 93
Excerpt 3: the ascent at Ostia (9.10.25) 98
4 Memory, time and the self 104
1 Love and death 104
2 Friendship 108
3 The self in time 113
4 Memory and forgetfulness 116
5 The problem of time 123
6 Time and the Trinity 127
7 The self before God 129
Excerpt 4: the end of the Confessions (13.38.53) 131
5 Afterword 136
1 The continuation of the Confessions 136
2 Afterlife of the Confessions 141
3 Autobiographies and the self 144
4 Derrida’s Confessions 147
Bibliography 153
Index Locorum 162
Index 167
’
S
ERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
‘Thepastisaforeigncountry’,wroteaBritishnovelist,L.P.Hartley:
‘theydothingsdifferentlythere’.
The greatest books in the canon of the humanities and sciences
can be foreign territory, too. This series of guidebooks is a set of
excursions written by expert guides who know how to make such
places become more familiar.
All the books covered in this series, however long ago they were
written, have much to say to us now, or help to explain the ways
in which we have come to think about the world. Each volume is
designed not only to describe a set of ideas, and how they devel-
oped, but also to evaluate them. This requires what one might
call abifocal approach.To engagefully withanauthor, one has to
pretend that he or she is speaking to us; but to understand atext’s
meaning, it is often necessary to remember its original audience,
too.Itisalltooeasytomistaketheintentionsofanoldargument
by treating it as a contemporaryone.
The Routledge Guides to the Great Books areaimed at students
inthebroadestsense,notonlythoseengagedinformalstudy.The
intendedaudienceoftheseriesisallthosewhowanttounderstand
the books that have had the largest effects.
AJG
October 2012
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have been reading and writing and thinking about Augustine’s
Confessionsfor morethantwentyyearsnow;overthattime,Ihave
cometohavestrongfeelingsabouthowtheConfessionsshouldbe
read,soI wasdelightedwhen I wasaskedtowritethisGuidebook
and impose my ideas on a wider audience. The invitation for-
tuitously coincided with a sabbatical from Bryn Mawr College,
whose president and provost I should like to thank most warmly
for their generous support of my time away.
I began writing the Guidebook in early 2015, while I was avis-
iting fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences,
and Humanities at the Universityof Cambridge; I was back home
inPhiladelphiabythetimeIfinishedit.IwasinvitedtoCambridge,
andlavishlyhostedthere,bySimonGoldhill,thepresentDirector
of CRASSH; I also enjoyed the hospitality of Wolfson College,
where I washoused, and in particularofits president Sir Richard
Evans and hiswife Christine Corton.
My intellectual debts are frequentlyon display in the books and
articlesthatIhaveselectedforfurtherreadinginthecourseofthe
Guidebook; here I should like particularly to mention Philip
Burton, whom I also saw in Cambridge. Who but he would have
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
given such sustained and serious attention to discussing exactly
how the Confessions should sound?
I should like also to thank the readers selected by Routledge,
whose reports were thoughtful and generous and altogether
models of the genre.
Since coming to Bryn Mawr, I have had the joyof teaching the
Confessions a number of times, in both English and Latin, and it
was with my students in mind that I wrote this book. Many of
themhavehadperceptivethingstosayaboutthework;butIthink
especially of three, with each of whom I associate a particular
passage of the Confessions and their delight at discovering and
interpreting it. They are Brittany Pladek ’07, Louisa Foroughi ’11,
andMonicaQuiñones-Rivera’15(andincaseyouwerewondering,
the passages are respectively Confessions 12.28.38, 1.2.2 and
10.8.12).
This book is for them, and for all my students at Bryn Mawr,
graduate and undergraduate, past, present, and future.
Catherine Conybeare
Philadelphia, PA
November 2015